


Fragrant is the Blossom

by captainjackspearow



Series: Doing What Must Be Done [3]
Category: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Death, Alcohol, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Adoptive Parent Dynamics, F/M, Failed Purification, Featuring a Surprise Wolf Cameo, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Rated for Subject Matter (see notes), Traumatic Memories of War, reference to canonical suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25003828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainjackspearow/pseuds/captainjackspearow
Summary: Tomoe's death and the immediate aftermath.Or, "that time they both got wasted on Ashina sake by the old serpent shrine."
Relationships: Genichiro Ashina/Emma
Series: Doing What Must Be Done [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599427
Kudos: 19





	Fragrant is the Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> Could be considered a missing flashback from Kingfisher Sound the Alarm. Unlike the other two fics in the series, this fic explicitly handles Emma and Genichiro's experiences with Tomoe's failed Purification. As such, this is part of the reason this fic is separate from the rest - I wanted to let people specifically avoid flashbacks to this if they wanted to. The only scene in which it's intimately described is the first, though the rest is peppered with the recollection of small details.
> 
> Final note: there is nothing to glorify about suicide. Tomoe's death holds such narrative weight for all five of the orphans in a very bitter way, and it serves as a major catalyst for their endgame behavior. So, I wanted to explore the grief that immediately followed.

It’s quick when it happens.

She’s seen people die before. She’s watched soldiers bleed out in cots as she's tried to staunch the flow of blood, to cauterize wounds, watched gangrene take limbs and lives as she’s left helpless with nothing but painkillers to ease their passing. She’s watched women gasp for breath after deliveries gone wrong. Those deaths were far slower.

This, though, happens far too fast to do anything.

The Everblossom tree has long withered, but she still enjoys the view from the small outcropping of the reservoir and beyond. She'd only meant to pass a moment of peace before returning to the bustle of the infirmary.

For a moment, she worries she’s interrupted a secret embrace. Takeru lays back against the bark, his eyes closed in what could have been contentment if not for the pain in his expression. A small vial lies in the dirt, discarded.

Tomoe presses a small, preserved flower to his lips with gentle fingers. He takes it between them, though he opens his mouth again not a moment after as if to protest, but he’s silenced with a small wince and the touch of a finger to his lips as she presses her own to his hair.

She should have left, should have said something, should have coughed so they _knew_ they weren’t alone, should have-

-but she was frozen for fear of what they’d say, for spoiling the moment, because it was clear something important was happening, something that felt earthshaking before it truly _was_ , and she couldn’t be the one to-

And it was quick, so quick.

Her own distant scream still rings in her ears as clearly as the image of Tomoe’s panicked face, turning on a blade’s edge to gape at her in horror, is burned into her mind.

She learns later: it was an important moment. Just not for them.

(Tomoe’s papers, when she finds them shoved in between pages of Takeru's journal, explain _nothing._ She hides them in her pockets for fear of their finding. There’s no need for anyone else to get fool ideas.)

*

He’s training when he gets the news. Grandfather doesn’t have the decency to come himself.

He'd known something was off. She’d been running at least a quarter of an hour late, and for someone who once lectured him for half their allotted lesson hour on punctuality when he showed up five minutes late, that wasn’t insignificant.

Everything about this hurts. What she did. That _he_ knew. That neither of them had the decency to consider him, for all the polite bastard had a reputation for thoughtfulness.

That she held the damn blade to her neck without even a thought for him, because if she’d had one, she’d have remembered what she normally does every afternoon and would have _cancelled their damned training session._

He feels guilty for a moment for not sparing a thought for Takeru, but it’s enough to be angry at her, instead. That’s more kindness than he thinks the man deserved.

The Fountainhead Spiral flashes in the distance, taunting him, with every bright. flare. The scars along his forearms burn along with his eyes, and each slam of the wooden blade into the training dummy echoes the drumming in his ears, because what is he still _doing_ here? 

A mockery. An urchin play-acting at nobility, playing war-games, abandoned to a pointless death a second time and running through unorthodox sword forms like his instructor will arrive any moment when they’re currently preparing her corpse for burial.

He can feel the servants eyes boring into his back as the rooftop dojo echoes with the sounds of his own footfalls and brute force, and he’s struck by a sudden urge to just _leave._

So he does, throwing the blade to the ground, pushing past the concerned gawkers who’ve yet to work up the strength to speak the thoughts he can read on their faces, descending the tower to get far, far away from here.

The abandoned sword slides along the tatami as he stomps towards the stairs, and there’s the distant echo of wood against tile.

It’s only later, when the rain hits, lightning flashing in the air, that he wonders if it fell from the roof.

*

Dogen doesn’t speak about it, but he’s clearly heard the news.

One of the younger soldiers was sent in with a laceration sustained during some sort of accident during spear drills. She lays the stitches out neatly, and if she’s uncharacteristically quiet, Dogen doesn’t comment on it.

He supervises her in silence, or at least, does so until the young man sputters awkward thanks and makes himself scarce, when they are once more left alone, among empty mattresses and a shelf full of bulk ingredients that need to be pulled and dosed for the palace’s inhabitants.

Dogen doesn’t look at her as he speaks. He just calls out to her gently, giving her the privacy of not having to meet his gaze, for which she’s grateful.

It spares her the effort of tailoring an appropriate expression.

“It’s never easy, Emma.”

“What’s never easy?” she asks, eyes firmly trained on the numbers in Dogen’s shorthand, dosages of diuretics for older members of the palace staff. 

“Bearing witness to death.”

Numb, she sets the jar back on the shelf. She just manages to reach the level of incredulity she wants to express when she asks, still not facing him, “Did you truly expect it to be?”

“No," Dogen says firmly, but nonetheless gently. "Never. But I’ve lost a good many in my time, and it would not be remiss for you to hope the burden is lighter with experience.”

“Dogen,” she says, a touch of irritation bleeding through, “that was not the first person I watched die that I couldn’t save.”

The older man shakes his head. “It’s different as a physician. I always felt more responsible to keep those brought to me alive. So to see someone-”

“Dogen,” she interrupts, sharply. “My family burnt. I watched countless people burn that I couldn’t save. I was four. I’ve borne witness to plenty of death.”

Dogen is silent after that. It’s only after she finishes packing up the last of the current batch that she realizes her hands have been shaking.

They label the jars with small cards and pressed leaves to more quickly find what they seek among the infirmary's packed shelves. A dried wisteria blossom is delicately glued to the paper beneath her thumb along with Dogen’s written warning about careful dosing.

She stares at the fragile petals. She thinks about Takeru, bloody lips around an immortal bloom, as ephemeral as the flower. The blood that stained his tongue was as red as any other’s.

They told her it must have been poison, but sakura aren’t toxic.

She thinks of a man who only bled twice, who died once, who could have been as peaceful as any old man that'd come to terms with his fate, as serene as he was. Had been.

He would have accepted it, if he had... like she'd...

-but it was _fear_ she saw. His eyes were as frozen as those who still bore them back on the battlefields.

The stolen papers burn a hole in her pocket like another countless corpses, crumpled and ink-stained and utterly unfathomable. She can’t explain why she took them. Perhaps, just to have proof they existed.

(Perhaps it was to have proof they died. Something nobody can take, can smooth over with half-truths and deliberate concealment.)

She barely _knew_ them. Lord Takeru was a frequent visitor of late, stopping by for ginger tea and something for a strange cough that made Dogen’s face turn uncharacteristically dark, but Lady Tomoe was barely a fixture in the palace, for all she was sent on strange jobs, travelled deep into the Ashina countryside and beyond.

(Orangutan can’t - _couldn't_ \- stand her. He’s never told her why.)

But Lord Isshin’s grandson did, and too many pieces are raw and sharp and _unexplained_ , like that dark year of war before everything burnt to ash, and she’s no fool. She’s seen that fear in dead men's eyes before, and she won’t feel safe until she knows why it was there.

Someone, undoubtedly, must have told the general’s grandson by now, for the word's been whispered through the halls in hushed voices. It’s strange, sometimes, to think of how different Dogen’s gentle forgetfulness of her past is from Lord Isshin’s cold whimsy.

The jar makes a gentle sound against the wood of the countertop as she sets it by the small pouch of wisteria seeds. Dogen looks up from where he’s hunched over his accounts.

It’s only then that she realizes the sound she’s been hearing is the gentle fall of the rain on the roof outside.

“I think,” she murmurs, “I’m going to take the afternoon off.”

Dogen nods, still giving her the privacy of not making eye contact. “Good idea. Rest will help.”

She sighs, and washes her hands, moving to leave. But Dogen stops her at the door with a gentle shout.

“One moment. I almost forgot,” he says, scrambling for a small box on his desk, placing it gently in her hands when he finally finds it. It has several small botamochi inside, sticky rice wrapped in bean paste.

“You probably didn’t have a chance to eat earlier. That’s no good.”

Despite herself, she can feel the gentle beginnings of a small smile. “Thank you, Dogen.”

“No thanks necessary. Get some rest, please.”

The storm is in full force by the time she finally exits the castle, one of those strange grey afternoons that feels more like evening. The Fountainhead flashes in the distance, beyond the mountains, churning with a wrath that she can’t even begin to understand.

She never understood why he was so drawn to it, of all things. But she can forgive him that, box clutched like the only solid thing in front of her, because he’s the only other person in this castle who understands what it’s like to be so intimately connected to death that a part of her doesn’t also want to kill.

*

The Fountainhead spiral curls between dark rainclouds, only partially obscured by the mountains behind the old serpent shrine.

It winds like static, like lightning burns, like the burn of the sake he stole from Grandfather’s room on his way down here as he swallows each bitter mouthful.

Everything’s appropriately numb now, but he can’t stop thinking about her.

It doesn’t make sense. She’s too alive to be a corpse.

She didn’t even _want_ to go back there, last month. She’d been uncharacteristically irritated when she'd mentioned the reason for her upcoming absence. Fuck, she’d actually _grimaced,_ no holds barred. Displeasure on full display, no thought for appearances.

He can’t imagine how anyone would leave a place like that. A city atop a mountain, built upon waterfalls and endless sakura trees, with fertile earth and frequent rain and warriors who fight like dancers. Imagine leaving that behind for Ashina for anything less than-

-whatever had them fleeing, he guesses. But now he’ll never know _why,_ because she never bothered to tell him beyond a quick warning about heresy and public image as a nobleman’s heir, about the gatekeeper who wielded a spear better than the seven, who'd carved up the side of her face a second time, giving her another matching scar.

She’d been so distant, after that. She wouldn’t even tell him how the fight went beyond the obvious evidence that she was here, still alive, still standing. Fuck, she never used to pull away during training either, but the signs were all there, she’d brushed him off twice as often, he’d caught her half on the verge of _apologizing_ for it once, so he _knows_ he’s not just imagining shit, but hell, he’d just chalked it up to him somehow stupidly disappointing her.

And he _did_ fuck up, because he’d been so wrapped up in chalking it up to him being a shitty student to read between a single one of those lines.

She was just planning on leaving him behind. He can feel himself choke on the sake, and, like always, is glad for the storm, because at least he can pretend the dampness on his face is just rain.

This whole time. She’d been planning this.

It is not the first time he’s been left behind in the dust by someone who’d rather lie than own up to the painful truth of death, but this somehow hurts even more, because it’s not like his mother _chose_ to bite it.

He can forgive his mother, at least, for the lack of closure, though it bites at him like hunger on days he can't brush off the weight of it. But the fact that Tomoe didn’t even have the decency to think of how to give that to him settles into his bones like icy water.

(The thought doesn’t occur to him until later that she _chose_ not to, that she turned away for fear of the difficulty of admitting she was leaving him alone. It’s the first time he thinks of her as a coward.)

(The stolen sake burns as he drinks it, and he feels like one, too.)

*

The rain drags in a bedraggled physician some indeterminate time later. Emma looks like a ghost, like something crawled into her eyes and died there.

The messenger’s words hit him in that empty look – “ _Lady Emma found them.”_

She sits wordlessly beside him, wet hair dripping onto the already damp wood. He takes another sip, and she eyes the bottle skeptically.

He shrugs. “You can have some,” he says, swallowing hard at the croak in his voice, “if you want.”

She shakes her head, pushing the box she’d been clutching towards him, sliding it across the wet floorboards. “Dogen gave me food, if you’d like.”

It’s his turn to shake his. “Not hungry.”

“Me neither.”

The rain falls as they sit, leaning against damp wood, watching the silent corner of the palace outskirts proceed as it usually does. Birds with damp feathers call to each other over the rustling of leaves in the wind. Thunder strikes. The storm continues. The world moves on. They remain, watching.

Ashina castle has not been strewn with corpses since they were children. These days, the only dead are those who succumb to long-lingering injuries, the rare elderly advisor, the victim of childbirth. It has been a long time since a blade split flesh and took life on these grounds, but perhaps it was really not so long at all.

It’s disturbingly amusing – the notion that the castle of Ashina isn’t bloodless, that it never really was, that it never really will be. He knows Emma will understand that, so he doesn’t think hard before the sarcasm slips through his lips. “Must have really sucked,” he says, “to find corpses _here_.”

They’ve found plenty of corpses in their childhoods – stumbled around them, trudged over them, watched the life leave their eyes. Though they’re free of the war now, the bodies undoubtedly left their mark on her as much as the image of them still haunts him.

She sets the bottle down. He stops, because he can’t remember when she picked it up, and feels his face pinch together in confusion.

Her expression is dead-eyed, numb and frozen.

It reminds him of a young woman he once saw at an execution. Her mother screamed for her son, but she just stood there, silent and motionless, watching the life leave her brother’s eyes.

There’s a tear clinging to her cheek. She doesn’t seem to have noticed it, nor him, nor much of anything else beyond the small circular mark in the old floorboard she’s staring at, gaze firmly trained on the small broken piece of wood.

Her voice is barely above a whisper when she speaks. “I didn’t,” she mutters, “find corpses.”

His blood freezes.

“I was there when it…” she trails off, unable to put it to words, but he has to-

“-you saw it happen.” The words leave his lips, and he knows it’s not a question. So why did he say it?

For himself? To acknowledge the weight of it?

“It wasn’t poison,” she says, swallowing hard. She doesn’t explain.

Despite himself, he chokes out a laugh. “How would one even poison a divine heir?” he asks. “Is that seriously what they… was he already sick? Was he-”

He has so many questions that he doesn’t even know where to start. He doesn’t even like Takeru, so he doesn’t know why that’s something he even cares about, and a part of him knows it’s unfair to look to Emma for all the answers he knows he’ll never get, but she _has_ to–

She must understand what it’s like to be abandoned by the dead for what seems like no purpose or reason at all, without as much as a goodbye.

But Emma says nothing.

“Emma,” he says, pleading quietly. “She left me.”

She left him, alone in a castle that was as much a true home to him as it was to her. She left him for a corpse. She left him in the care of the lord who pulled him off another corpse to teach him how to make them properly. She’d had him almost think he had a family again, and she left him – _chose_ to leave him – for her lord.

Emma thinks: Takeru died with foam on his lips, fear in his eyes, and his retainer’s blood all over his face and dress, like a proper lord. Undignified. Brutal. Unintentional, desperate, and alone. A hand reaching for the robes of the woman whose corpse slumped against him, pinning him into the dead tree.

But Tomoe, she knows, died knowing that somebody saw her final moments despite her best effort to the contrary, last moments heavy with the knowledge that somebody knew she _chose_ the act, and despite her intentions, there was no peace in her expression. Only that same desperate fear.

The thought alone is enough to haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because there’s nothing else to say.

Should she show him the papers? Should she show him the papers that Takeru so clearly stole from her _,_ that _she_ stole, bloody-fingered, from the corpse of a broken immortal who took his own life to escape the confines of his prison here? From a man who could not even _bleed_ until he wasn’t a man, anymore?

They speak about the war instead, drunken ramblings as if it were common reminiscence rather than world-rending horror. They share bloody snatches of conversation amidst the downpour instead of the forgotten box of food: the story of the first time he watched life leave a man’s eyes, the memory of her horror at recognizing a scrap of fabric on a now-faceless corpse. How she was pulled from the long-burnt battlefield by a man who left the first moment he could out of guilt.

(How sometimes people leave for fear of carving your soul out, but do so in the process.)

How he was pulled from a field of corpses by a man who still might not know the feeling.

At mention of Isshin, Genichiro grows quiet once more. He murmurs something half under his breath after a moment, but it's incomprehensible, muffled into the arm resting on his knees. She turns a heavy head towards him, confused, and he flushes, repeating himself.

“I can’t believe,” he says, though the resignation in his voice suggests otherwise, “that he didn’t tell me himself.”

A thought occurs to her again at that, and she shivers, because-

“Do you think,” she says, barely above a whisper, “th… It was because Lord Isshin insisted he stay here?”

“Wh- Takeru?” His voice is cut through with surprise, but his face betrays the weighing of her words.

She nods, uncertain. “He wasn’t exactly free to leave, was he? And she- I don’t know about-”

“You don’t have to convince me that she didn’t…” he says, carefully, eyes shutting out Emma, the rain, the memories.

She hums softly in acknowledgement.

They both know Takeru was as good as a prisoner, a guest in name, only. He had nowhere to go, and was of some uncertain use to those who graciously permitted him to stay.

(She knows they’re in much the same situation. He doesn’t let himself think too closely about the similarities, for fear of what he might realize.)

There was a dinner about a year back, after all, where everything was laid bare. Lord Isshin had been entertaining honored guests: several famous shinobi who’d served Ashina well in the reclamation.

(They’d each heard stories about their exploits. Orangutan told her never to trust those who relished killing. Isshin told him the Owl once tricked a man into tearing through his own commander, he was so skilled on the field.)

Owl was brash and too-far gone on monkey booze, rambunctiously slapping at the table and yelling at Lord Isshin in such a way that, if he’d been anyone lesser, he’d never be welcome in Ashina again. Isshin, on the other hand, brushed off his barbs like he’d be a fool to even consider something so bold and unapologetic as to make use of his guest.

Takeru, the subject of the argument, was picking quietly at his dinner, silent but for an occasional gentle but firm interjection on his own behalf. But to all who looked, the tension in his face was palpable even from half a table away. Tomoe, to her credit, kept her mouth firmly shut, but it was perhaps the most on edge that either ever saw her.

(Orangutan made eye contact with none but Emma and Dogen. It’d been the last time he’d been drawn back to the palace. She’d been permitted to attend only because of his presence, and was not free to leave. Genichiro, on the other hand, was expected to be at Isshin’s side, much like the Owl’s young apprentice was seated silently by his.)

(The brown-eyed boy made eye contact with none of them, and was so quiet it’d have been easy not to know who he was altogether but for Owl’s barking the occasional order at him.)

The Lady Butterfly was the one who ultimately diffused the uneasy mood, laughing Owl’s bullshit off as him being a pushy old man. Owl looked as if he’d snap at her for a moment, but whether it was due to respect or his own intelligence, wisely thought the better of it. Isshin had laughed at that – an honest amusement, unlike the Butterfly’s tactical humor – and slapped a hand on Tomoe’s shoulder, telling her to lighten up as well, for such seriousness did not become her.

Genichiro had briefly feared for the man’s life when he saw that, though if she’d decided, he’d thought, to bury her blade in his spine, it would have been well deserved.

(Emma watched Orangutan quietly wince at that, rubbing at the wrist of his prosthetic, and wondered what their history was.)

Takeru, Emma remembered, had left the dinner early, in the end. She’d been excused when Orangutan also took an early leave, and decided to go for a walk around the grounds, for it was spring, and the weather was warming once more. She’d found him standing beneath the Everblossom tree, eyes firmly trained on the faint flickers of the Fountainhead Spiral in the distance.

He’d caught her watching him, but he’d only smiled kindly at her, reached for a young flower, and told her a story.

“ _We brought them with us_ ,” she recalls him saying. “ _They’ve always reminded me of home, and never more so when they bloom with new life_. _I find myself frequently nostalgic in these months._ ”

“ _Do you miss it?”_ she’d asked, because he, too, knew what it was to long for a home that was, as you knew it, no longer.

But he'd shaken his head, staring down at the flower between his fingers, and said, wistfully, “ _how could I?_ ”

The tree withered and died the next day. The spring bloom was cut short, and it never flowered again.

“I think,” Emma eventually responds, feeling her voice crack on the words, “she went back to the Fountainhead last month to figure out how to kill him.”

Her words hang heavy in the air, like the humidity of the storm, clinging to their skin.

He tastes them in his mouth, measuring the bitterness of the possibility. He gives up, lets it permeate his own when he finally figures out how to put his thoughts about that into something comprehensible.

“Did she have to bite it too, to do it?” he says, derisively, “Or was that just because she couldn’t bring herself to give a shit about any of us?”

She can feel the pain laced with the anger, there. The “if _he_ wasn’t there” is unspoken, but clear.

But it’s a lie, she _knows this,_ much in the same way Tomoe couldn’t bring herself to say goodbye, pretending he wouldn’t care. A way to mask the pain of her loving him and choosing to leave, in spite of it, by pretending she never loved him at all.

She did love him.

She knows this – Tomoe _did_ love him.

She remembers walking across the palace grounds, watching them spar good-naturedly amidst the downpour of another storm like this one, an easy grin uncharacteristically gracing each of their faces.

She’d been climbing the tower on some errand the first time he’d successfully channeled lightning. He’d burnt himself badly for clinging to the metal of his blade, and she’d nearly jumped out to offer her assistance, as unwelcome as it might have been for his pride. But instead, she’d watched as Tomoe walked over to him, reached for his arm to inspect it, and did not chastise him for his failure.

Instead, she was gentle, and for all her strict demeanor, Emma was surprised to hear her praise his skill despite his obvious frustration.

_“I’ve never met anyone outside of the Fountainhead who could do this, Genichiro,_ ” she’d said to her student, wrapping tightly bandages around the burns, once she'd inspected them thoroughly. _“And I’ve watched several try, though they still call it heresy. Not even the shinobi that your Lord Grandfather works with,_ ” she continues, eyes furrowing in something bitter, _“who refuse to stop pestering me for instruction, have managed it._ ”

Genichiro had only eyed her skeptically, but his expression melted into exhaustion, and he'd said nothing.

_“But,”_ Tomoe said, “ _it **is** dangerous, as techniques go. This is why you need to be careful when you make the decision to use this to defend yourself in the future. To take a life like this will steal a little life from you in return. Every time.”_

(Emma had tarried long enough, she’d known, and she was not so naïve to think Tomoe was unaware that someone'd stopped behind the screen. She’d made her way to Lord Takeru’s quarters as she ought to have been doing. Still, she could not help but long for a teacher like Tomoe, for someone who spoke with such care for her students.)

She thinks about Dogen’s gentle, patient instructions, about Orangutans infrequent, guilty visits. How the former put up with her frequent absences for lessons in swordplay, eyebrows furrowed, but never spoke his thoughts. How the latter always snuck her food from the kitchens, but wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

They do care, but they don’t know _how._ Maybe it was the same for Tomoe. But Genichiro, conversely, has been caught between two surrogate parents that, unlike her own, are so diametrically opposed.

And so what she says, ultimately, is “I know she cared about you.”

Genichiro inhales deeply. The soft patter of the rain fills the place of a response.

“More than almost anyone else,” she continues, but he cuts her off with a painful, resigned noise.

“ _Almost_ ,” says Genichiro. “Yeah.”

There’s not much to be said for that, no way to cut the harsh truth of the reality, so she lets him mumble into the storm, listens to the rain and the soft, wounded sound of his voice.

“I never understood the fuss about Takeru,” he says, quietly, “regardless of what he was. He couldn’t _do_ anything – sure, he’s tall, but he never put his height to use on the field, so how much did Grandfather really get out of him, that he'd wanted to, in the end?”

“He did nothing,” Genichiro continues, bitterly, “but stand around and look like someone who’s too fucking ethereal to have ever belonged here.”

She opens her mouth to deny it, to speak up on the dead man's behalf, but she has no idea what to say that will make the pain of it all better and still be the truth.

“He never once suffered,” he says, like the reality of it is sinking in. “They say he couldn’t even fucking bleed, if those rumors were true.”

(She knows they are.)

“I just…” he trails off, and Emma notes that he’s teared up again, red eyes once more wet, and not from the rain in their faces. “…I don’t see how someone like that is worth dying for. None of this makes sense.”

Something overflows in her, too, at that.

It’s too much. A hand reaches into a pocket, grasping at crumpled sheets of paper, still clinging to them even as she hands them over, moving close to sit right up against his side so their tucked-in knees can shield them from becoming stained with water as well as flecks of blood.

Everything spills out. How she should have stopped them, when she stumbled by. How she was confused, she should have realized, that if she’d only said something _sooner,_ made even a small noise, maybe they wouldn’t have-

“ _No,_ ” he says, emphatically. “You can’t- this is _her_ fault. _His_ fault. They did this to themselves, like fucking idiots, but _they_ did it. You can’t count them at your own feet.”

“ _How can I not?_ ” she whispers, because she doesn’t know.

“But,” he asks, pressing a hand into her shoulder, clinging to the damp fabric like it’s the only tangible thing he knows, “you _saw-”_

“ _She saw me at the end,_ ” Emma chokes out. “ _She heard me scream, and turned – right at the end, she…”_

“Why did you take this shit?” he interrupts, quickly, red eyes flickering to the scraps of paper.

He reaches gingerly for the torn pages, leaning into Emma, because for some reason he can’t bring himself to let her go. Likewise, she curls into him, and not just to read over his shoulder.

Takeru had these, she’d claimed. But the handwriting is familiar: formal, narrow characters. It’s unmistakably Tomoe’s.

“ _Lord Takeru’s coughs are worsening still,_ ” it says, and he feels his heart sink. “ _and the improvised treatment can only do so much. Returning to the divine realm is hopeless. All that can be-_ ”

The sentence cuts off, stained and scratched out with angry blotches of ink.

“ _I wish only,_ ” it ultimately continues, “ _at this point, to sever the Dragon’s Heritage and restore his humanity._ ”

( _He had dragonrot,_ Genichrio thinks, aghast. _He had-_ )

_“Restoration is… we’d require the Everblossom, obviously, but the Mortal Blade, too, and I cannot acquire the latter before it’s too late. It was hidden by the High Priest of Senpou, and that man has no desire to sever the immortal ties… a lethal mistake. Mine,_ ” the page finishes, _“will have to suffice, for it is all we have.”_

There is nothing left to say.

The papers are set on wet floorboards. It’s Emma who ultimately picks them back up, folds them carefully, and pockets them.

They cling to each other in the maelstrom, arms clutching damp fabric, cheeks pressed to similarly wet skin, a head resting against the other. The Fountainhead spiral turns amidst the heavy clouds, flashing every so often with the odd burst of light that dances across the sky like a ghost.

Neither remember the last time they clung to another person.

They will not speak of this for years, until Tomoe's blade cuts into her student's neck as another unwilling soldier stares at Emma with desperate eyes.

*

Late that evening, he curls up in his bed, sheets pulled up tight to cover his eyes, drunk enough that he might be able to find some sleep. The storm is still going strong, and the heavy sound of water hitting the tiles of the roof is easier to focus on than anything else.

Footsteps in the hall outside interrupt whatever shallow peace he was slowly making his way towards. He pulls the blankets over his head as they grow louder, unwilling to deal with whatever it is - _whoever -_ but then there’s a single knock on the door, as expected: brief, purposeful, _impatient,_ and he opens his mouth to say something, when-

He ultimately doesn’t have to. The tentative voice of what must be some page beats him to it.

“Lord Isshin,” they say, urgently, “important news has arrived from the north-west border.”

“Spit it out,” says the tell-tale voice of his grandfather, in that strange, blunt way of his.

“A village is in uproar,” the young voice continues.

Genichiro flinches. Rebellion is not something he’s prepared to handle.

“Our scouts report that a child was born there this afternoon, to-”

“What importance,” interrupts Isshin, dangerously amused, “is a child?”

“…to a mother,” the messenger continues, “who died on her childbed and rose again.”

There’s a brief pause, and Genichiro almost wonders if the pair silently left, if he'd imagined the words, but then-

“This afternoon?” asks his grandfather thoughtfully, now truly intrigued.

There's an affirmative noise from the messenger.

He cannot see it, but he can almost hear the smile in his grandfather’s voice. “Ah,” he sighs, “…unsuccessful, then.”

“I beg your pardon?” the page asks, confusion apparent in their voice.

“Never mind that,” his grandfather says, firmly, his voice now growing fainter as the pair begins to move away from his door, down the hallway. “Do we have eyes on the boy?”

“Along with every other clan,” the other voice responds. “Hirata is trying to recover him for…”

But the voices trail off into the night, and he lies there, alone and forgotten once more.

_"So, it really was for nothing,"_ Genichiro thinks.

The storm rages on outside, fuming and bitter, like the heavy feeling settling deep into his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Title from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music:" "They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled/is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve."
> 
> 2) Shoutout to my buddy Ryan, who gave me the idea to use wisteria here. Its seeds are used medicinally, but the plant on whole is incredibly toxic. Treatment with wisteria often creates problems even as it solves others. Additionally, it (somewhat ironically) represents immortality and long-life, which slaps.
> 
> 3) I'm feral for the concept of Genichiro ultimately wielding Tomoe's black mortal blade (the sword that killed her) only when he's operating so counter to her desires, after failing to successfully use the powers she taught him to defend Isshin's ideals. And the notion that it was thrown to him as an afterthought hits harder if you interpret the blade as hers.
> 
> 4) Also feral for the idea in the description of Tomoe's note that suggests Takeru might be coming down with dragonrot. After all, Tomoe was still in Ashina, and likely required to kill in Isshin's service. The idea that his power ultimately took from him too, in the end, really gets me. Additionally, Tomoe's note implies, with the idea of returning him to humanity, that he may have been originally human, which spawns some incredible parallels with the Divine Child of Rejuvenation. Operating off the idea that Takeru and Tomoe left Fountainhead with the blades to escape the nobles and their immortality-seeking, it's entirely possible that Takeru was a similar experiment in taking/creating that immortality for mankind (particularly when you conceive of the Dragon's Blood as *stolen*), or even a manmade vessel for the Divine Dragon. In this case, they'd have run so the nobles couldn't use him any longer.
> 
> 5) Takeru speaking with Emma about nostalgia is very tied up in that. The Everblossom reminds him of where it originated. But on another hand, he saw the war of Ashina's reclamation, saw Tomoe used as a weapon, saw Orangutan and Shura, and knows the unethical thirst for immortality is present here plenty as it was in Fountainhead. So the nostalgia, in this context, is primarily a similar longing for a world where this isn't the case.
> 
> 6) The timing is technically possible for Kuro to be born the moment Takeru dies. Wolf is late 20s, possibly early 30s. Kuro is no more than 10-12 or so. So he'd have been born when the older three were in their late teens, early 20s at most. Cinnamon Topography.
> 
> 7) I got two more short ideas compliant with this series, and one more Sekiro one-shot I want to write. Who knows when I'll get my brain around to yeeting them into the aether, but.... someday.


End file.
